Re: DOS box creepers and Tame

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Martin J. Osborne"  on
Wed, 30 Oct 2002 16:47:09 -0500

Martin: Lots of material in your msg.

> Regarding the list you get when you Alt-Tab (my normal method of switching
> between programs): I use several DOS programs other than XyWrite, so it would be
> nice to have different icons there. I'm wondering is there is a workaround: could
> one write a small Windows program to lauch XyWrite, and give the program its own
> icon???

Dunno. Never played with it. But if you hold down Alt, and keep hitting Tab,
the list cycles through all open processes and displays the program titles.
Moreover, the Taskbar at bottom always displays the first few letters of the
program name, which is all I need. You can have many Taskbars down there, and
pack a ton of functionality into it. I agree that the icons are limited,
although this seems to afflict the VDM (Virtual DOS Machine) programs mainly.

As for your complicated batch file arrangement, I don't quite follow, but one
thing I know is that it would be impossible to do all that in the tiny memory
space available after you shell to DOS from XyWrite. Clearly, somehow your
batch files are "START"ing those programs in their own memory space. I mean,
there is NO WAY to run GSview in 150-200 Kb of memory -- I just loaded it under
W2K, and it is chewing up nearly 2.5Mb of memory, maybe 10 times what Xy4DOS
consumes! Neither could you return to XyWrite while simultaneously running
GSView in XyWrite's memory space. But if you want to get these processes all
running simultaneously in W2K, it is very easily done. Modify your BATch files
to use the START command for everything.

 
> Wow!---that's quite something! I've never seen a XyWrite screen with that many
> lines of depth before---looks great (and useful)! Two problems:
>   - XyWrite comes up in full screen mode... Can I get it to start in a window? >(I get the wonderful
> long screen when I go to a window---why is the screen long?)

RMB on the icon, Properties==>Options==>Display options==>Full screen
Screen is long because Properties==>Layout==>Window size==>Height is specifying
more than 25 lines. Make sure the height of the Screen buffer is at least as
large as the Windows size height.

>   - I want to load my own startup file---my standard batch file says
> \xy4\editor, \xy4\startup.mjo
> ---but when I run startup.mjo after executing your suggested shortcut, I go back to
> a short screen.

Put startup.mjo in Properties==>Shortcut==>Target:
...editor.exe/e4000 ,d:\xy4\startup.mjo

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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